185. Dr. William Bengston ignored by cancer industry

I know this is an older show but it is one that has stuck with me since the results Bengston reported were so undeniably amazing; curing mice of the same cancer which in 100s of previous experiments produced a 100% mortality rate. There really is no conventional explanation that could account for the results Bengston reported. I would really love to hear from the other people involved in the experiments to get their point of view. I have looked everywhere, read Bengstons book, etc., but nowhere can I find statements made by others who witnessed or participated in the experiments and I think it would be a valuable follow up show.

The most obvious candidate is David Krinsley, whose contact information could be found here http://geology.uoregon.edu/courtesy-appointments/
He has apparently had a very prestigious academic career, published multiple times in Nature. Probably up there in years now. His name is on the original paper with Bengston but unfortunately nowhere is his perspective recorded as far as I can tell. Would be fascinating to here if he can confirm or add a new perspective. So just wanted to put that out there in case Alex also thought it would be worth following up.

I know this is an older show but it is one that has stuck with me since the results Bengston reported were so undeniably amazing; curing mice of the same cancer which in 100s of previous experiments produced a 100% mortality rate. There really is no conventional explanation that could account for the results Bengston reported. I would really love to hear from the other people involved in the experiments to get their point of view. I have looked everywhere, read Bengstons book, etc., but nowhere can I find statements made by others who witnessed or participated in the experiments and I think it would be a valuable follow up show.

The most obvious candidate is David Krinsley, whose contact information could be found here http://geology.uoregon.edu/courtesy-appointments/
He has apparently had a very prestigious academic career, published multiple times in Nature. Probably up there in years now. His name is on the original paper with Bengston but unfortunately nowhere is his perspective recorded as far as I can tell. Would be fascinating to here if he can confirm or add a new perspective. So just wanted to put that out there in case Alex also thought it would be worth following up.

I read the book, too. While the claims are extrordinary, they seem well documented. I do however feel that he communicated two different things: Most of his book, he gave the impression that this is a non-spiritual practice, and that non-gifted people can (probably) do it. At the very end of the book however, he goes on to mention that Ben and himself was sometimes accompanied by spiritual beings, and that he himself sometimes calls upon them.

Now, if these powers came to be after mystical visitations/experiences (or are in any way connected to the spiritual), it seems like something not so tempting to try to replicate. At least, it's a different kind of experiment.

It would be interesting to know where Bengston actually stands; are the healings actually possible withouth the religious touch? My guess is he would say yes, while his experience probably is that he met Ben's helpers before his first healing, so he really can't tell.

On a different note: My hamster was recently diagnosed with uncurable cancer. I might try some weeks using the Bengston technique (unless she starts getting pain; then I would have to take her to the vet). It certainly would be a meaningful and interesting experiment, should the outcome be positive.

I read the book, too. While the claims are extrordinary, they seem well documented. I do however feel that he communicated two different things: Most of his book, he gave the impression that this is a non-spiritual practice, and that non-gifted people can (probably) do it. At the very end of the book however, he goes on to mention that Ben and himself was sometimes accompanied by spiritual beings, and that he himself sometimes calls upon them.
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Thanks for bringing this up. I read the book a long time ago and either missed this or forgot it but, like you said, he kind of throws this in at the very end and it certainly does change the narative. I don't really know exactly what to make of that, but it gives me something to think about...

One aspect that is interesting in particular, is the "do it yourself" attitude of the book. Would be really interesting if some one from the forum would read the book and start experimenting (and share the results). Perhaps start with an animal ...

One aspect that is interesting in particular, is the "do it yourself" attitude of the book. Would be really interesting if some one from the forum would read the book and start experimenting (and share the results). Perhaps start with an animal ...

I read the book, too. While the claims are extrordinary, they seem well documented. I do however feel that he communicated two different things: Most of his book, he gave the impression that this is a non-spiritual practice, and that non-gifted people can (probably) do it. At the very end of the book however, he goes on to mention that Ben and himself was sometimes accompanied by spiritual beings, and that he himself sometimes calls upon them.

Now, if these powers came to be after mystical visitations/experiences (or are in any way connected to the spiritual), it seems like something not so tempting to try to replicate. At least, it's a different kind of experiment.

It would be interesting to know where Bengston actually stands; are the healings actually possible withouth the religious touch? My guess is he would say yes, while his experience probably is that he met Ben's helpers before his first healing, so he really can't tell.

I read the book, too. While the claims are extrordinary, they seem well documented. I do however feel that he communicated two different things: Most of his book, he gave the impression that this is a non-spiritual practice, and that non-gifted people can (probably) do it. At the very end of the book however, he goes on to mention that Ben and himself was sometimes accompanied by spiritual beings, and that he himself sometimes calls upon them.

Now, if these powers came to be after mystical visitations/experiences (or are in any way connected to the spiritual), it seems like something not so tempting to try to replicate. At least, it's a different kind of experiment.

It would be interesting to know where Bengston actually stands; are the healings actually possible withouth the religious touch? My guess is he would say yes, while his experience probably is that he met Ben's helpers before his first healing, so he really can't tell.

Having just attended a four day conference on the Bengston method of healing the weekend of Jan 10th 2015 from what I saw and heard from Dr. Bengston himself religion/spirituality are not a requirement. In point of fact he was quite adamant in stating that the best frame of mind for a successful healing is ambivalence. Just let the "healing energy" do its thing. From Bengston's perspective the whole spirituality/religious belief attitude that a true believer brings to the table would at best not matter at all and at worse totally derail a successful healing. As far as the experimental protocol for picking healer candidates he prefers people with no background in spirituality or other potential healing modalities.

I would think running into this energy healing thing and trying to answer the questions that would inevitably arise creates a bit of a slippery slope that our western science really has no answers for. So one would be forced to look elsewhere for some sort of a rationalization. That said, throughout the lectures Bengston really had no answers for what causes the effect of healing. Just that you can do experiments that have been replicated where the result is essentially a miraculous cure from what was previously certain death by doing nothing but putting your hands around cages full of cancerous mice.

Well... I've read a little about Bengston and his energy healing. I was a physician myself, had a session in an oncology dept during my time of exercice. I won't lie: we sometimes opened doors (backdoors that is) and kept healers inside up to our palliative care rooms, only on the patient's demand and because it could do no harm and soothe somehow the dying person and his/her family. These 'healers' were all picked up and called at the his bedside by the patient himself. That process had me witnessed several of these healing attempts, tried out by several different healers. They all had a slightly different way of doing it, but were more or less brushing their hands around the patient's body, some of them touching it, even palpating or massaging in a way while others would just move their palms around, gravitating around the body if you will, without any skin contact. Anyway... At my knowledge, there has never been any miracle of any sort coming out of those attempts ; the patients who were to die died, all of them and without improvement in health -save for a psychological improvement at times I have to say (which is already a little something), the ill ones often being more confident and calm after these sessions.
So here's my thought: Bengston claims are huge. Let me repeat, they are enormous, gigantic, paradigm shiffters in force. Yet, I have a very hard time believing that since 2009 nobody tried this on humans when there was nothing else left to try, and that any succes in that matter would have stayed in the dark and unspoken of. Back in the days, I was really intrigued by Bengston experiments upon mice, because, for once, it had the scientific method involved with results and not just gesturing with the hands before soon to be dead cancer patients. But as time went by and nothing more came up regarding humans being healed, with obviously no more succes -even on mice-, I'm really filled with doubts as of now and have an uneasy feeling about these trials.

@Plato - Interesting comment. Part of the issue you may be experiencing is the fact that the best success with energy healing at least for the Bengston method seems to depend on the patient having an intact immune system. So those on deaths door step having gone through various traditional methods before trying Bengston in many cases would have immune system issues to say the least. It seems that Bengston energy as far as cancer goes assists the body to heal itself using the immune system. Experiments with mice that are bred with no immune system failed while those with a normal immune system were always successful. One way to confirm the results would be to run your own experiment using Bengston's experimental model. He is still giving the occasional seminar that would help kick start you down that road if you have any interest in pursuing it. You can contact Equilibrium Energy to find the next date.

Well... I've read a little about Bengston and his energy healing. I was a physician myself, had a session in an oncology dept during my time of exercice. I won't lie: we sometimes opened doors (backdoors that is) and kept healers inside up to our palliative care rooms, only on the patient's demand and because it could do no harm and soothe somehow the dying person and his/her family. These 'healers' were all picked up and called at the his bedside by the patient himself. That process had me witnessed several of these healing attempts, tried out by several different healers. They all had a slightly different way of doing it, but were more or less brushing their hands around the patient's body, some of them touching it, even palpating or massaging in a way while others would just move their palms around, gravitating around the body if you will, without any skin contact. Anyway... At my knowledge, there has never been any miracle of any sort coming out of those attempts ; the patients who were to die died, all of them and without improvement in health -save for a psychological improvement at times I have to say (which is already a little something), the ill ones often being more confident and calm after these sessions.
So here's my thought: Bengston claims are huge. Let me repeat, they are enormous, gigantic, paradigm shiffters in force. Yet, I have a very hard time believing that since 2009 nobody tried this on humans when there was nothing else left to try, and that any succes in that matter would have stayed in the dark and unspoken of. Back in the days, I was really intrigued by Bengston experiments upon mice, because, for once, it had the scientific method involved with results and not just gesturing with the hands before soon to be dead cancer patients. But as time went by and nothing more came up regarding humans being healed, with obviously no more succes -even on mice-, I'm really filled with doubts as of now and have an uneasy feeling about these trials.

I think that it is a mistake to assume that healing one type of cancer in an experimental model in mice logically implies that energy healing can cure any type of cancer in any person - and if it doesn't then the explanation is fraud. Conventional treatments don't exist for all diseases and existing treatments don't always work on every patient. If energy healing doesn't live up to the miraculous claims made for it, it is possible that the claims made are wrong but that energy healing does have some value.

In my experiences learning to do spiritual healing at Spirtiualist churches, I saw that energy healing is a real phenomenon. I saw it work, but I didn't see it perform miracles. I was taught that it should be used in conjunction with mainstream medicine and not as a replacement for it. I was also taught not to make claims about what it can accomplish. Research should focus on determining the capabilities of energy healing and the techniques and training of healers that work best, not on all or nothing public demonstrations that are simply publicity stunts.

I sympathize with those who think Bengston should put up or shut up. His extraordinary claims are just muddying the waters, creating confusion and unrealistic expectations which when unrealized lead to people thinking the whole thing is a fraud, when in reality there is a real phenomenon that needs to be properly understood so that it can be used to help people in ways it is suited for.

Bengston's claims were discussed in another thread and it seems to me that Bengston's research on mice was probably valid but his claims about treatment of humans are exaggerated:

First of all, all the best to Alex. Can one say "congratulations on your healing"?

Regarding Bill Bengston and the Bengston Method, I worked with him extensively in 2007 and 2008 to bring his method to the mainstream. I found his mouse experiments online and was so excited by what I read that I immediately contacted him. Our initial chat and a subsequent visit led to six workshops. We worked out the workshop format together (the first one was a four-hour talk on the mice followed by a half-hour demonstration of cycling). A practice group was formed from among the most interested students in the workshops and we met monthly to compare notes and work on various facets of the method. For the first couple of meeting Bill "joined us" by speaker phone from New York. One memory that stands out is one of those times, when all of us in the group complained to him about our difficulty in speeding up the images as we cycled. Suddenly he said "it's like this" and I felt as if somebody reached inside my head and spun my brain. A friend of mine in the group reported the same sensation. At another group a woman asked to talk to him when he came on the phone and she told him that she had had breast cancer, had undergone surgery but not any other treatment, and now she had lumps in the other breast. We treated her with Bill, and the next week when she had a guided ultrasound, no lumps could be found.

My experiences with the method and my thoughts about it can be found in the early entries of my blog, entitled Treating Cancer with Bioenergy. If you google "bioenergy and cancer" it should pop up. Essentially I began to wonder about the role of cycling in the healings and also the role of resonance in the healing of the mice by Bill's skeptical volunteers. I am quite sure that Bill's mentor, Bennett Mayrick, did not write down 20 things he wanted, create images of them and then begin spinning them at great speed in his head. He just developed his healing ability naturally. In fact since then I ran across Bennett Mayrick in Leigh Fortson's book Embrace, release, heal. In chapter 5 of that book is the story of Jeff, who was healed from some dreadful cancer by a "spiritualist" in the desert called Ben. Ben, interestingly, did not charge him a dime, and Ben did not treat him with anything resembling image cycling. I wrote to Leigh Fortson asking her to contact Jeff to find out if his Ben was also Bill's Ben, and the details matched. Bill's Ben was 50 in 1971 and Jeff's Ben was 70 in 1991. Both Bens lived in the desert and both Bens died in (I believe) 2004. Jeff's healing was accomplished through what seemed like a combination of guided and spontaneous imagery with not a whit of "cycling" in it. Jeff had had extensive chemo (I can't remember whether he had radiation) and Ben still managed to heal him, so by this time he must have overcome the limitation of not being able to heal anyone who had had conventional treatment.

Regarding the role of resonance in the healing of the mice, let me go back to Bill's experiments, specifically the problem of the control mice being cured. In the first four experiments if anyone so much looked at the control mice, which were supposed to die, they instead recovered. In later experiments it wasn't even necessary to look at them. They would only die if they were secreted away somewhere far without Bill knowing where. To resolve the dilemma of why the control mice recovered, Bill worked out a hypothesis of "resonant bonding." The mice were resonantly bonded and therefore any treatment given to one mouse was given to all the mice. But he didn't go the full distance with the hypothesis to ask whether their healers were also resonantly bonded, which would have meant that any treatment given to the mice by any of healers was given by all of them, including Bill himself. The upshot is that if the skeptical volunteers were resonantly bonded with Bill, as the mice were resonantly bonded with each other, none of them needed to have learned anything or acquired a healing ability to be successful at treating the mice. And ultimately there is no less reason for the healers than for the mice to be resonantly bonded, if resonant bonding as a hypothesis stands.

Our practice group did some nifty healings, the best one being of a little girl with a lung abscess and scoliosis in Abu Dhabi. The most courageous of us, heartened by Bill's oft-repeated comment that the most aggressive cancers responded the most readily, ran out in search of people with aggressive cancers to treat. The first patient had acute myelogenous leukemia and was told that with aggressive medical treatment (which might result in death) she had a 10 per cent chance of survival. This was not something she was willing to do. We treated her valiantly but to little effect. I took her to see Bill by bus because she wasn't allowed to fly and his treatments perked her up, but when she returned home she crashed. I kept treating her after my colleagues gave up, and then something strange happened: her white blood cell count, which had sky-rocketed, reversed. The doctors cited lab error, but the numbers just kept going down. In fact they were within the normal range when she died.

Our second patient was a man in his late thirties with stage-4 pancreatic cancer. His wife contacted us through an intermediary after having been told that he had maybe 48 hours to live. We rushed into his hospital room, asked for his permission to treat him, and proceeded to treat him singly and in pairs for about an hour and a half day. The results were mind-blowing and immediate. First the swelling in his legs started going down, then he began to need less morphine, his jaundice reversed, and he began to eat. He was then able to stand up, walk first to the door of his hospital room and back then along the hallway, then he was able to stop his morphine altogether, and a week after we started treating him the hospital sent him home. His oncologist called him "our little miracle on the ward" and one of the nurses with 25 years of oncology nursing under her belt said that she had never seen a reversal like this in her entire career.

After he went home he continued to improve, walking down the stairs, then to the park and back, then going grocery shopping and to the cottage. His jaundice almost completely vanished and when he had blood work done six weeks after we started treating him, all the values were either normal or near normal. Then he went to the hospital to have a port removed and the doctor who did the procedure asked him why he would bother since he was going to die anyway. The hospital also did a CAT scan or MRI (I forget which) because his doctor was curious to see what was going on inside him given his blood test results. After this hospital visit he went into a steep decline and we could do nothing to reverse it. Just before he died I received a terribly distressed phone call from his wife who told me that the test results were back and that "all the tumours were still there and they were all bigger." When he died we were devastated. The group lost heart and many people drifted away. Another doctor told us later that his symptoms were consistent with septicemia.

Three of us treated yet another person who was told he had pancreatic cancer that had spread to the liver, although it may have been bile cancer. He was told in July 2007 that his cancer was inoperable, and we began to treat him in August. He was expected to decline speedily and die by March of 2008. In March 2008 he was still taking long walks with the dog and doing things like cleaning out the garage and painting the house. He even went back to work for a while. We didn't seem to be reversing his cancer, just slowing it down and keeping it on hold while giving him improved quality of life, which in itself had great value. We treated him until July 2008, when he went salmon fishing and white-water rafting and then returned from his trip and told us that he decided to terminate his treatment. He died in March 2009 after a futile and damaging attempt at chemo.

All these three were aggressive cancers that according to Bill's definition should have been "pieces of cake" but weren't. Incidentally the organizer of one of Bill's later workshops with whom he is no longer affiliated claimed in her promotional literature that our first pancreatic cancer patient, who had died six weeks prior, was alive and well and had gone back to work. There are other inaccuracies, as in this FAQ from Equilibrium Energy. Note the paragraph which claims that Bill and the therapists he trained have been successfully treating "bone, pancreatic, breast, brain, rectal, lymphatic, [and] stomach [cancer], [and] leukemia" for 35 years. This is a paragraph taken from the introduction his book with "and his therapists" added to it. I don't know whether Equilibrium Energy still hands out this FAQ, but it's on the web.

I think the only claims that can me made pertain to Bill's experiments. Everything else is very vague. "Anecdotally" people have had success -- but what does that mean? What is success? Is it a full remission? Does an extra year of life with relatively good quality of life count? The method works, but not to the degree that most of us would want. It keeps being marketed on the strength of the mice and on the hope that it may work for people. I have not been able to find out what kind of success other people have had with it and I would be overjoyed to hear about actual documented cancer remissions by people who have learned the method.

Good for Alex that it worked for him and good on Bernadette for persisting.

All these three were aggressive cancers that according to Bill's definition should have been "pieces of cake" but weren't. Incidentally the organizer of one of Bill's later workshops with whom he is no longer affiliated claimed in her promotional literature that our first pancreatic cancer patient, who had died six weeks prior, was alive and well and had gone back to work. There are other inaccuracies, as in this FAQ from Equilibrium Energy. Note the paragraph which claims that Bill and the therapists he trained have been successfully treating "bone, pancreatic, breast, brain, rectal, lymphatic, [and] stomach [cancer], [and] leukemia" for 35 years. This is a paragraph taken from the introduction his book with "and his therapists" added to it. I don't know whether Equilibrium Energy still hands out this FAQ, but it's on the web.

I think the only claims that can me made pertain to Bill's experiments. Everything else is very vague. "Anecdotally" people have had success -- but what does that mean? What is success? Is it a full remission? Does an extra year of life with relatively good quality of life count? The method works, but not to the degree that most of us would want. It keeps being marketed on the strength of the mice and on the hope that it may work for people. I have not been able to find out what kind of success other people have had with it and I would be overjoyed to hear about actual documented cancer remissions by people who have learned the method.​

I also think the qi-gong is the most advanced form of energy healing and researchers should seek out qi-gong practitioners if they want to study the phenomenon, and not invent techniques of unknown efficacy until they are ready to compare techniques and training methods. Qi-gong masters don't just hold out their hands and hope it works, they are trained to sense the qualities of the energy.

Qigong healers were able to correctly sense that the cells in a culture were unhealthy despite being told otherwise.

We deal with all this so routinely in the lab, I didn't think to mention it to the qigong master in our first experiment. We simply handed him a dish with cells growing in it, and said, "There are normal cells in the dish. Please give them a healing treatment. We hope to see them grow well, even more than untreated control cells." That was the procedure. Seems straightforward, right? This qigong master had agreed to the task and I figured we'd let him take his time and do his thing with the dish. But after treating the cells he came out of the treatment room shaking his head. "Those cells are not normal," he said. "They are very abnormal, so I didn't try to make them grow. I tried to eliminate them."

I was feeling skeptical about the whole experiment and my first reaction was one of sheer irritation. I tried to be polite but I told the man he was frankly wrong. There was no question. These were normal brain cells. He came right back, just as confident as I'd been. He defied me outright. "No," he said, "they are not normal. I sensed an abnormal qi."

Well, at that point, it hit me. I realized there were in fact only one hundred normal healthy brain cells in that dish, and they were growing on top of ten thousand tumor cells in the process of committing cell suicide. So, if this healer could in fact perceive anything about the cell culture as a whole, we might perfectly well expect he'd take notice of the dying tumor cells, not just the much smaller percentage of healthy cells. At that point, I backed up and explained the nature of the culture to him. He nodded and let me know that now everything made sense.